


crescente luce

by wichahpi



Series: Elate Week 2016 [6]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 15:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9827414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wichahpi/pseuds/wichahpi
Summary: In which there are new beginnings.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For (late) Elate Week: **October 22nd {Day Six}** \- Reconciliation || Discovery; _I know what you mean_

As the sun slowly rises over the Himalayas, Elena and Nate finally say their reluctant goodbyes. It had been two weeks since Sully and Chloe left, and the looming inevitability of their own departure had grown with each passing day.

Elena visibly fights back her tears as Pema’s small arms squeeze gently around her, still carefully avoiding the wounds scattered across her left side. There’s a heavy weight in Nate’s stomach as he watches Elena struggle, and he fights back his own tears as Pema reaches up to hug him as well.

The little girl turns back to Elena and says something that makes her face crumple even more, and Elena pulls the girl into another tight embrace. She hugs Tenzin too, speaking lowly as she presses something into his palm before she backs away sadly.

“She asked when we were coming back.” Elena tells him quietly, long after they’ve left the village. “I couldn’t give her an answer because I didn’t want to lie to her, or make a promise I couldn’t keep.”

“We’ll go back.” He promises her just as quietly, threading his fingers through hers and squeezing gently. “We will.”

She’s quiet for the rest of the ride as they both doze in and out of consciousness, but their joined hands rest in her lap as the car bumps along the winding roads..

They spend another week or so holed up at a hotel in Kathmandu, where Elena has to make an assortment of very difficult phone calls as she sorted the last of her – and Jeff’s – affairs. She’s emotionally and physically drained afterwards, the little strength she’d regained suddenly zapped away as she sags against him wearily.

“I lied. I told her it was quick, and that he wasn’t scared and he didn’t suffer. A mother should never have to hear that their child is dead. Especially not – the way it happened.” Her voice wavers as she muffles a shuddering sob into his shoulder and he pulls her closer.

He catches her staring at the mirror more than a few times. Her eyes haunted as she takes in her reflection, touching at her collarbone gently. He knows there’s a particularly angry and jagged scar there, had helped her carefully avoid it when she’d bathed after waking up that first time, his lips had ghosted across it on more than a few occasions in the moonlit darkness of their room. But he can’t quite gauge where her head is at, and she’s very studiously not talking to him about it. And although he can’t blame her – he’s the last person to chide someone for not talking about their thoughts and feelings – it unsettles him, because he’s never seen her shy away from anything like this before.

“I’m going to tell people I got attacked by a shark and I punched it in the face.” She informs him one night – or maybe it’s actually morning already, he can’t quite tell anymore. “Or something equally as badass.”

“Punching a shark is very badass.” Nate agrees as he tugs his shirt off of her, making sure to kiss right where the scar curves over her heart. He doesn’t tell her how beautiful a reminder it is of just how strong that muscle of hers can be, how much he admires – and curses – the fact that she walked towards a lost cause like Harry Flynn and got herself blown up for all her kindness, and still manages to get up every morning and smile at him like he wasn’t the reason she was there in the first place.

She’s doing it again as she dresses for the airport, wincing only slightly as she tugs her sports bra into place and frowns at herself. Her eyes meet his in the mirror as he stands behind her, and she gives him a quick smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“You okay?” He asks quietly, dropping his head to kiss the curve of her shoulder, where shrapnel scars and freckles form starbursts and constellations.

She hums noncommittally, bringing her hand up to touch the side of his head and weave through his hair. She’d given him a much-needed trim the previous night, surprising – and perhaps frightening – him with the ease at which she took scissors to his head.  

 (“Wait, you _wanted_ the mullet, right?” She’d teased, before he’d shaken his head violently and pinned her to the bed as water droplets dripped down onto her. The top was a bit uneven in places when it finally dried, but he couldn’t even bring himself to care.)

“The taxi will be here soon.” She says finally. “Our flight leaves in about three hours.”

He tries not to look too morose at the prospect. He wasn’t quite ready – and he suspected Elena felt very much the same, if the way her eyes constantly zeroed in on the spot where he’d been shot by Flynn was any indication.

But Elena had an apartment or two that were steadily collecting dust, people who were chomping at the bit awaiting her arrival back to the states. And Nate, he had –

Well, Nate had a lot of thinking to do, he supposed.

Their paths run parallel until they land in New York. Elena wryly explains that her desire to keep her job only slightly outweighs her desire for immediate sleep, and she has to spend the next couple of days in various meetings and debriefings and maybe even a dressing down or two from her producers and an assortment of her boss’s bosses. All of whom were demanding to hear from the only available source how everything went so wrong.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here with you for moral support?” Nate feels anxious and jittery, but whether it’s from the jetlag or the dozen or so coffees he downed on the day-long flight or the imminent prospect of watching her leave, he’s not sure.

“I’ll be fine.” Elena reassures him. “I’ll be on the first plane home tomorrow, if I’m lucky. You should go home too, get some rest.”

He doesn’t know how to say goodbye to her this time, so he just smiles and presses a kiss to her forehead, releases her hand that he doesn’t quite remember taking as he promises to call her when he gets the chance. They go their separate ways at the same time, and he forces himself not to turn back around. He’s not sure what would bother him more, seeing her looking back at him too, or watching her disappear into the crowd.

He doesn’t have much in a way of home – he never has, and he tells himself he prefers it that way. He has _places,_ somewhere to stay between travels, places he uses to recharge his metaphorical – and sometimes literal – batteries before jumping headfirst into the next adventure. But no attachments, nothing to anchor him down. And for a long time, he hasn’t had a problem with his lifestyle.

But within the first hour of landing in Houston, he realizes something. He just _misses_ her – something he’d never actually experienced before, beyond the more physical aspect of longing. But with Elena, he finds himself missing her quiet remarks, her laughter that seemed to erupt from her chest when he did something unexpected, the fond, kind of knowing look she’d give him sometimes.

And when he falls asleep, he’s back in Shambhala, watching Elena disappear into a cloud of dust and debris as Flynn’s explosion bursts behind his eyelids.

Sometimes, when he crawls over to her, her eyes are vacant and lifeless. Others, his feet seem cemented to the ground as she screams desperately for him, twitching in pain. And sometimes, he’s the one to pull the pin.

The humid Texas heat is almost the perfect polar opposite of the Himalayas, but Nate feels just as cold as he did in the mountains. He spends days in his own self-imposed purgatory. He can’t make himself call her when he feels so raw and exposed, and he hates himself for it. But he can’t stop his nightmares, and in his sleep-deprived haze, he makes the split second decision to book a red eye out of the city.

He ends up on Elena Fisher’s doorstep before the sun even rises.

Her home isn’t quite what he’d expected – for some reason, he pictured a doorman and maybe the well-furnished lobby of a high rise. Instead, he gets a wrought iron gate manned by a sleepy college student, and a circular cobblestone drive dotted with Spanish-style condominiums and a swimming pool set in the center. Beyond the pool, he thinks he might see moonlight – or floodlights – reflecting off the ocean, but it’s still too dark to tell. 

 “Alright, so, here we are.” He tells himself, checking the post-it he’d scribbled her address on for the fifth time.  The number on the door is correct, even though a six – or maybe a nine – hangs a bit crooked. But he hasn’t quite worked up the nerve to knock on it yet, and there’s a rather angry-looking cat that he swears is glaring at him from her steps.

“Here goes nothin’.” He tells the cat. “Wish me luck, would you?”

He raps lightly on the door. After several long moments with no response, the doubts creep back in.

“What am I _doing_? It’s stupid o’clock in the morning, of course she’s sleeping right now because she’s not a goddamned _crazy_ person. This was a terri-“

The door creaks open.

“Talking to yourself, Drake?” Elena teases quietly as she leans against the frame. She looks even more exhausted than him, if that’s even possible, but she’s the most luminous thing he’s seen since – well, since they parted ways.

“Oh. Uh. The cat, actually.” He gestures down to where it’s still giving him a rather unimpressed look.

“The cat.” Elena repeats, giving him an unimpressed look of her own as the animal winds around her legs affectionately. She takes him in slowly, his tired, bloodshot eyes and the dark circles underneath them. His hair, which looks like he might’ve stuck a fork in a toaster. The stubble that was probably only a few days out from being classified as an honest-to-God beard.

She raises a quizzical eyebrow, clearly asking what the hell he’s playing at, but all he manages to say is, “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“Doctor Meow Clawtex is _not_ my cat.” Elena informs him indignantly. “She’s kind of more like an annoying acquaintance that drops in from time to time to beg for attention and nap on my furniture. Would you like to come in?”

He pauses. “That’d be great, yeah. Wait, you named your cat _Doctor Meow Clawtex_?”

“It’s not her real name because she’s not my cat.” Elena insists, but the grin on her face says otherwise.

“You gave it a _name_. I think that definitely makes it your cat.”

She shakes her head at him even as she steps back to let him in, and he already feels better than he had in days. But for once, he doesn’t pause to take in his surroundings. The pull he feels towards her is too strong. His hands move to frame her face and they just stare at each other for a long moment. When she doesn’t pull away – or tell him to fuck off – it’s like a switch is flipped.

His hand drop to her shoulders and he pushes her as firmly as he dares until her back is pressed against her door. His knees bend as she makes contact to make their height difference a little less pronounced, but she still has to tilt her chin up to meet his eyes.

“Hi.” The grin she gives him is just on the endearing side of cheeky, her eyes sparkling with mischief.   

“Hi.” He parrots back, bringing up one hand to cup her jaw as the other brushes her hair back from her face.

She raises an eyebrow at him expectantly. “You…want something?”

“Yeah, a bit.” He presses his forehead to hers with a gentleness he wasn’t quite expecting from himself, with how tense and anxious he’d been after only days apart. But the moment is ruined when his stomach lets out a loud noise, and Elena stifles an amused snort even as she brushes her lips against his.

“I’d offer to make you breakfast,” Elena whispers against him. “But I just got in last night and there’s probably at _least_ three health code violations in my fridge right now.”

As much as he _wants_ – well, his stomach has clearly made plans without consulting him first. And when her own stomach growls in response, he shoots her a fond grin.

“Guess we’ll be dining out, then.”

 “I might know a place.” She admits, pressing her hands to his chest as she gently pushes him back. “Just let me get cleaned up.”

As she returns to what he presumes is her bedroom, he takes the time to finally glance around her living space. There isn’t much in the way of personal effects; the few pictures that hang on the wall are scenic photographs or watercolored art, and her end tables are stacked with books. Blankets litter her chairs and her overstuffed couch, and her coffee table is covered with pictures and documents arranged around her laptop in some obscure sense of order.  He thinks he can see the spine of what might be a worn photo album, tucked haphazardly up underneath the coffee table but before he can investigate further, he can hear her footsteps from down the hall.

He turns his focus to her, and he’s so busy cataloguing the stiffness of her gait – a bit better already, but not quite the smooth, confident movements he knew were natural for her – that he doesn’t even really see her until she’s right in front of him.

“Your hair.” He says, perhaps a bit dumbstruck. He’s never actually seen her with her hair down before, he realizes. Even when they’d been regularly sleeping together in Panama, it was always up in a complicated-looking knot that he’d never had the patience to figure out, and she’d never bothered to take it down except to shower.

“What about it?” She touches a loose wave a bit self-consciously before tucking it behind her ear.

“It looks – “ He pauses. “It looks good.”

“Oh.” Elena looks startled. “Well, thanks, I guess. I grow it myself, you know.”

 He laughs shortly before wrapping an arm around her and ushering her out the door. “Alright, smartass. Where are we going?”

“Do you trust me?” Elena asks teasingly as they walk together, squeezing gently into his side.

“Course.” He replies. And it’s not a lie because he’d go just about anywhere with her, he realizes with a start.

“Great.” She throws a grin at him as she unlocks her car. “Better buckle up, cowboy.”

The coastal road winds a bit nauseatingly, but the drive itself is quiet and not at all uncomfortable. For once, he doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence with words, and is content to listen to the low sounds of the radio and the whipping wind. She keeps glancing over at him worriedly, but he can’t stop himself from staring at her.

“Is it the hair still?” Elena asks flatly, moving to gather it up with her free hand. “I can put it up if it’s going to bother you this much.”

“No no, don’t –“ He reaches out to stop her, hand gently encircling her wrist. “It’s beautiful. You’re –“ He trails off, but he doesn’t let go of her.

She looks a little startled, but not displeased, and her fingers curl gently around his as he gives them a gentle squeeze.

“Almost there.” She murmurs quietly, turning down a road that branched closer to the ocean. The sun is just barely peeking over the horizon, throwing oranges and pinks over the shimmering waves. She pulls in front of a rather nondescript building overlooking the water, and Nate assesses it as quickly as he can.

It doesn’t look like anything special, with dark grey shingles and mismatched Adirondack chairs on a wooden deck. In fact, it looks more like someone’s glorified fishing shack than a restaurant.  A set of stairs lead up to another deck that wraps around the entire upper floor, and a weathered sign reading _The Grey Gull_ with a seagull motif hangs off the balcony.

Off the look on his face, she rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry, it’s FDA approved and everything.”

“Are you sure about that?” He asks skeptically as he closes the car door.

“Well, it hasn’t killed anyone yet. That I know of.” Off his look, she pretends to look contrite. “Kidding, kidding. I promise.”

The inside is marginally better. There are actual booths and tables and everything, although a bar takes up a large portion of the center of the room. It’s also deserted at the early hour, which Nate isn’t sure if he should count as a plus or not, despite Elena’s reassurances that the fishing crowd keeps a different schedule. A young waitress, who watches them with only mild interest, immediately comes to take their order.

“Fisherman’s special.” Elena grins before raising her eyebrows at Nate, who fumbles with a menu while Elena turns her focus to the waitress.

“Your boss around this morning?” She asks lightly. “Well. Probably out on the boat, isn’t he. Or sleeping.”

The waitress must nod or make some kind of face, because Elena laughs in response.

“I’ll leave a note for him, if that’s alright?” Elena asks. “I’m an old friend.”

“Sure.” The waitress – whose nametag reads _Jennifer_ – shrugs before glancing in Nate’s direction. “I’ll go get your drinks while you decide on your order?”

“Just water, for now.” Elena smiles, lightly tapping at Nate’s foot underneath the table.

Elena pulls out a pad of paper – ever the journalist, he thinks with a fond smile before he continues to skim the rather impressive list of options on the menu – and scribbles on it for a moment until Jennifer returns with two glasses and places a thumbtack on the table.

“Thanks.” Elena smiles at her warmly after she takes Nate’s order, and after a few more moments of writing, she picks the tack up and walks up to a corkboard hanging near the bar and sticks her note firmly in the center.

He glances around the interior more thoroughly, taking in the gratuitous boating and fishing paraphernalia and the netting hanging from exposed rafters. It seems so unlike her and he can’t help but ask the question he’d been sitting on since they’d arrived. “How do you know about this place anyways? This doesn’t seem like your usual hangout.”

“Why?” Elena raises an amused eyebrow at him as she settles back into her seat. “Because there’s no free Wi-Fi?”

It’s then he realizes he doesn’t know much about Elena Fisher at all. And for the first time, he realizes he wants to know _everything_ about another person. The thought equally terrifies and thrills him. Nate makes an apologetic face but before he can say anything, she continues with a wistful smile.

“It’s fine. My dad was stationed in Jacksonville when I was younger.” She shrugs. “Wasn’t much of a cook, either. We kind of did a world tour of burger joints and 24-hour diners.”

“Army brat?” He looks at her with surprise.

 “Marines, actually.” Elena corrects lightly. “This used to be owned by a fisherman’s wife, and she always kept the lights on for whoever stumbled in off the water. And I had a lot of nightmares, after my mother left. Dad would bring me here and order a shake and some fries and we’d just sit in a booth until I fell asleep again.”

Nate remembers the boy he once was with a pang, sitting in dark, boxed up bedrooms with Sam as they listened to The Clash to drown out their parents. Lets himself imagine a young Elena curled up in a booth overlooking the rocky shore and he finds himself hurting for the girl she must’ve been. They’re more alike than either of them probably realize, he thinks to himself.

“I’m…sorry.” Is all he manages.

“Don’t be.” Elena shrugs. “She tried to make me to go with her, but I couldn’t leave dad and I’ve never regretted it. Anyways,” She waves her hand dismissively. “All of that’s ancient history.”

She changes the subject to point out a picture on the wall closest to them, which Nate immediately jumps up to inspect. And sure enough, in the second row, third from the end, is a much smaller Elena Fisher with messy braids and a familiar – if not a bit toothy – grin.

“Cute.” He looks over his shoulder to grin at her. “You were cute. A little too Bugs Bunny, but cute.”

“I was _proud_ of those front teeth, by the way.” Elena’s eyes sparkle with amusement. “Got em both knocked out when I took a Gracie Vargas foul ball to the face. But we won the whole league that year and Gracie felt so bad she gave me her Crystal She-Ra Castle set, so it was almost worth the whole year it took for them to grow back properly.”

The laughter that comes from deep in his chest is almost unexpected, but Elena just leans back in her chair proudly, a quick flash of a grin as their waitress comes back with their meals – a mahi mahi burger, curly fries, and a milkshake for Elena and a grouper sandwich, onion rings, and a soda for Nate.

He settles back into his seat and takes a tentative bite of his sandwich – as trusting and fond as Elena seems to be of this place, he still can’t help but wonder about the likelihood of health code violations.

A few bites later, he nods approvingly. “This is really good.”

“Mmm.” Elena hums in agreement as she swirls a fry in some ketchup. “Almost better than I remember. I haven’t been back here in years.”

He looks at her curiously. “Why not?”

Elena shrugs. “Too many memories, I guess. But you looked like you needed a pick-me-up, and this place always did the trick for me. And I never did ask,” She tilts her head.  “What are you doing here, Nate?”

“I, uh.” Nate says sheepishly. “I just missed you?”

She looks mildly bemused. “Is that a question? Or –”

“No.” Nate shakes his head, voice firmer. “I missed you. And I couldn’t stop thinking about Nepal, and everything that happened –” His voice catches a bit before he gets quieter. “And before. After Panama.”

Elena’s fingers curl inwards in surprise. “Oh.”

“Before…it was a mess. I’m not pretending it wasn’t.” Nate insists, even quieter still. “And we didn’t really _talk_ in Nepal. About what this is. About what _we_ are. But do you think, maybe, we could try again? For real, this time.”

She twirls a fry on her plate nervously. “Depends.”

He braces himself as best he can, his chest tightening. “On what?”

She gives him a long, assessing look before popping the fry into her mouth and nodding at his plate. “Tell me, on a scale of one to ten, how good are those onion rings?”

He blinks. Twice. Processes it for a few moments. “Oh, uh…a seven, easy.”

She swallows with a pained look before her jaw drops, affronted. “ _Just_ a seven?”

Nate shrugs helplessly. “Well, they’re _onion rings_.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” Elena narrows her eyes. “The Gull’s onion rings got me through an entire year of algebra. I don’t know if I can associate with someone who doesn’t respect the sanctity of the onion ring.”

“The sanctity of the – _what?_ ”

“You heard me.” Elena folds her hands primly. “Although, I’m sure I could be convinced to make an exception. _One_. If given the right motivation.”

He hesitates only a second before grabbing her forearm, pulling her upper body across the table so he can press his lips gently to hers.

It’s brief – the table is pressing into some very sore spots on both of them and the waitress has been glancing at them with a little too much interest – but it’s effective. Nate feels a little wrecked inside, and Elena looks about the same as he pulls back.  

“So…” Nate says haltingly after a moment. “What do you say?”

Their eyes meet his across the table, hers still hesitant, and he can practically see her thoughts swirling in them. She doesn’t want this to be like before, after Panama. When they just fell into a relationship – or lack thereof – fueled by adrenaline and lust and a hundred different kinds of unhealthy behavior. 

After a few long moments, she nods slowly. “I’m up for the challenge if you are.”

He gives her a quick smile before pulling her back towards him. “I guess I should cancel my flight for tomorrow, then.”

He doesn’t leave the next morning. Or the next. Or any of the two dozen mornings after that. It’s not until Elena is taken off leave and given her next assignment – a fluff piece in a country he’s better off staying far, far away from – that he books another flight out. He hasn’t seen Sully since they parted ways in Tenzin's village, hadn’t even told him about him and Elena yet, and he figures it’s probably a good time to do some more digging into his namesake’s adventures.

But when he kisses her goodbye at the airport this time, the cool metal of her ring shoots frisson across the skin of his cheek, and its match on his finger burns hot with promise as they clink gently before they part. And he feels like it all just might be okay.


End file.
